The importance of trustworthy power structures | mjg59: “We shouldn’t be willing to give people a pass simply because they aren’t actually groping anyone or because they’re not members of the KKK. Those who drive people away from the community on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation deserve vocal condemnation, and if they’re unwilling to change their behaviour then the community should instead act to drive them away.”

The Kissing Sailor, or “The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture” and The Kissing Sailor, Part 2 – Debunking Misconceptions | Crates and Ribbons: “It seems pretty clear, then, that what George had committed would be considered sexual assault by modern standards. Yet, in an amazing feat of willful blindness, none of the articles comment on this, even as they reproduce Greta’s words for us. Without a single acknowledgement of the problematic nature of the photo that her comments reveal, they continue to talk about the picture in a whimsical, reverent manner, “still mesmerized by his timeless kiss.” George’s actions are romanticized and glorified; it is almost as if Greta had never spoken.”

Join the October Feminist Wikistorm! | Claremont DH: “Wikistorm will be an interactive, informational event in which experts will guide participants in editing, expanding, and creating Wikipedia articles. Experience editors will help students, professors, and any other interested participants actively engage with and improve Wikipedia as an online space. Participants will clean up, add information to, create, or expand Wikipedia articles relating to feminist or anti-racist topics.”

Some links that reference the recent GOTO conference:

Sexism in Tech | Insight Of An Intern: “Yet there are still moments where I am forced to consider whether this is really an industry culture I wish to be a part of- and whether it really wants me to be a part of it…”

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Most of it is well-known material, but a couple of sections had information I hadn’t seen before:

This pink it and shrink it approach represents typically shallow thinking about gender and usually only appeals to younger (lower income) women. Getting design right takes a lot more thought but yields bigger dividends.

Dr Gloria Moss, a gender marketing expert, confirms that when targeting women, having female input on the design team is crucial: “In design preference tests, I’ve always found extremely strong statistical evidence for ‘same-sex preference’. Men tend to prefer the designs that men produce, and women prefer the designs that women produce.”

And:

In many Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia – also referred to the Geek Nations’ – the technology gender divide is less prevalent.

It’s partly historic – during the communist era, all women were encouraged to work – but also that technology is perceived as a rewarding and well-paid career for women.

If that’s not what you were expecting from the title “Hacker news discussion on how there is no sexism in the tech industry” I’m not sure what to say. But I assume this was posted to potentially generate responses, not as a “promote this blindly!”

I dunno, it didn’t get me fired up enough to be worth anything, but maybe someone else is more riled?

The specific mechanism of the article – “I’m a woman and I haven’t experienced sexism, so the rest of you are BSing” – is uncomfortably familiar, too.

Is there an actual term for, like, women who insist really loudly that sexism is over and attack and attempt to silence feminists? ‘Cause that’s definitely the role a few women I was an undergrad with fell into. They tended to be kind of nasty to me, and I have this expectation that women who are invested in the idea that “there is no problem with gender here” are going to aggressively attack anyone who suggests such a problem exists.

Don’t know if there’s any official terms out there, but I like to call any woman like that “Fanny DeRail.” Just gives me the image of someone knocking another person onto the train tracks with their ass as they walk by.